Practical earning and learning

Our vision is that everyone be provided with the opportunity to practically ‘earn while they learn’. We advocate a ‘work first plus’ approach whereby we encourage people to find work as soon as possible and to use it as a stepping stone on their way towards career retention and progression, accessing training and skills where appropriate.

This includes training for skills in demand, but also encouraging people to take on regular work while studying, even if in an unrelated field, in order to have recent work experience and references.

We encourage our clients to set immediate and longer-term job goals to foster a mindset of career progression and to support enrolment in skills training in order to achieve longer term goals.

The ability to work flexibly is also key to enabling people to take up opportunities for learning alongside employment. We know that the likelihood of an individual accessing lifelong learning is strongly influenced by their personal circumstances. Family commitments is one of the most commonly cited reasons for people not taking up learning opportunities and we understand the importance of considering time and financial constraints faced by those in lower paid jobs to ensure they can access opportunities to facilitate in-work progression.

It is also vital that small and medium employers are able to benefit from any training funding and initiatives as they provide many of the employment opportunities for those people who are most disadvantaged in the labour market.

“We encourage our clients to set immediate and longer-term job goals to foster a mindset of career progression…”